Ever since Covid, the Neest has seen an eruption of pop-up, open-air cafes and beer gardens. Quite right, too.
The only thing better than going to an eatooterie is going to an ootside eatooterie. My most precious memories of holidays doon the decades are of sipping heady cocktails in stunning locations and feeding my face with fine food. Maybe that’s because my very first meal like that had such a dramatic – in more ways than one – conclusion.
Sweet 16 and barely kissed, adolescently ecstatic when the boatmen from Sorrento to Capri, Josef, asked me oot that Saturday night: a dead ringer for that hunky Italian Davide on Love Island. (Of course I watch it!)
My pal’s mum, our chaperone, rightly forbade the date, but no one was keeping Mo from her Romeo. Moonlight-bathed table at the end of a pier. Juicy pizzas. Instantly in love, trying to look grown-up, in spite of a huge dod of cigarette ash dropping into my wine – yet, still going to drink it, until he wheeched it away.
We’ll dra’ a veil ower the denouement, when he volunteered to tour me roon the famous beach caves – dirty sod.
Cracking lobsters in Jamaica while a steel band played Island in the Sun. Jerk chicken and salt fish on a beach in Barbados where, sadly, native sand critters ca’ed jiggers became illegal immigrants, taking up residence and laying eggs between my taes.
After weeks of useless dermatitis diagnoses, inspired doctor Derek Gray was the one who finally spotted ‘em and prescribed humongous horrors of beastie-buster tablets, the affa naisty side effects well worth the jigger-nuking.
It’s obviously still a bit of a hit or miss if Aiberdeen cooncillors give permission for al fresco catering
There were sizzling suppers by lapping waves in Cannes, where utterly charmant waiters expertly filleted oor sole meunière – until the bill revealed they’d filleted us even better. Happy days.
Go al fresco (but bring a jacket)
It’s obviously still a bit of a hit or miss if Aiberdeen cooncillors give permission for al fresco catering. This week, a new beer garden at the back of Golden Square’s Barbelow got the go-ahead. But, the marquee ootside Number 10 got the dunt because of complaints about litter and taking up a teenie bittie of a public park.
Ken ‘is – I reckon there’s barely been two dozen locals occupying that exact space in a decade. Shame.
Mind you, a bit of true grit doesn’t go amiss when you dine ootski ’n’ abootski in this neck of the woods. A pucklie weeks ago, slaverin’ ower the prospect of lamb hotpot in a beer garden up the coast, the patio heater beside us went kaput just as a North Sea haar seeped in, like Marley’s ghost. We ended up inside.
Last week, soaking up the sunshine in a bonnie garden pub, chilli-topped burgers were not only a treat for us but for the dozens of ruddy wasps which materialised from a nearby bush. Guess far we ended up?
Moreen Simpson is a former assistant editor of the Evening Express and The Press & Journal, and started her journalism career in 1970
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